Abortion Issue

A new Utah law requiring abortion providers to administer anesthesia to a woman if she is having an abortion at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy is the first of its kind in the nation and it is a reckless intrusion of a state legislature into the practice of medicine. In order to assure the best possible care for patients, decisions about what type of pain medication or anesthesia to administer should be made by medical professionals, not by state legislators.

The bill, signed into law by Utah Gov. Gary Herbert last month, requires an anesthetic or analgesic be administered “to eliminate or alleviate organic pain to the unborn child” — even though reputable...

Related "Abortion Issue" Articles

A new Utah law requiring abortion providers to administer anesthesia to a woman if she is having an abortion at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy is the first of its kind in the nation and it is a reckless intrusion of a state legislature into the practice...

Published in Los Angeles Times on April 12, 2016 — Print headline: "Legislating abortion practices - Utah's law mandating anesthesia for women at least 20 weeks along is a reckless move by lawmakers."

The Food and Drug Administration was absolutely right to re-label mifepristone, a drug used to induce abortions, to reflect a regimen already adopted by doctors. The FDA — which hadn't changed its guidelines on the drug since it was approved for...

Published in Los Angeles Times on April 01, 2016 — Print headline: "Abortion pill's new guidelines"

It is illegal in the U.S. to sell body parts. So the release of undercover videos last summer purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating fees for tissue from aborted fetuses launched a flurry of federal and state investigations into the...

Published in Los Angeles Times on March 30, 2016 — Print headline: "Grandstanding on fetal tissue"

The messages from the expectant mothers in Brazil resonate with desperation.“I'm thinking of doing the worst,” one woman wrote when her order for abortion medication failed to arrive. “I really need help. I can no longer eat, and I cry all the time.”The...

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider arguments in the most important case it has heard on abortion rights in two decades. Whole Woman's Health vs. Hellerstedt is a challenge by a group of abortion clinics to a 2013 Texas law that requires doctors...

Published in Los Angeles Times on March 02, 2016 — Print headline: "Antiabortion law in disguise - Texas legislators say their measure protects women. It doesn't. The Supreme Court should void it."

When the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus a global emergency, it also claimed that the disease was tied to increased cases of microcephaly in babies. A day later, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, which actively...

Now that researchers have identified a tangible link between the Zika virus and fetal brain deformation, pregnant women and those of childbearing age in the Latin American countries hardest hit by the mosquito-borne virus will have to make tough decisions...

Published in Los Angeles Times on February 17, 2016 — Print headline: "Defenseless against Zika - With no reproductive rights, many Latin American women could be at the mercy of the virus."

Is Hillary Clinton recalibrating her position on abortion as she seeks the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination?
It sure looks that way. In her last presidential run in 2008, Clinton said that she thought abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,...

One of two antiabortion activists charged by a grand jury last month in connection with filming covert videos at a local Planned Parenthood surrendered Wednesday and appeared outside court to applause from supporters who clutched homemade signs...

Abortion in the U.S. is at record-low levels, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The number of induced abortions was 1.1 million in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That’s down...

When I first heard it, I thought it was a joke: Bank robber takes refuge in a reproductive health clinic. Not a funny joke, but a cruel one. As a former Planned Parenthood employee, I knew the early reports would prove false. I knew the Colorado Springs...

Published in Los Angeles Times on December 06, 2015 — Print headline: "Threats, fires and potshots - The perils of working at a Planned Parenthood clinic."

"No more baby parts.”
As of this writing, that statement by Robert Lewis Dear is the only evidence that the “Planned Parenthood shooter” in Colorado Springs, Colo., was motivated by anti-abortion rhetoric.
Dear's comment came amid a rambling...

Published in Los Angeles Times on December 01, 2015 — Print headline: "Who's to blame in Colorado?"

The attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colo., that killed a mother of two, an Iraq war veteran and a police officer was a horrific crime and not the first such outrage. But was it also the inevitable result of recent...

Published in Los Angeles Times on December 01, 2015 — Print headline: "Assigning guilt in Colorado - Should GOP denunciations of Planned Parenthood be blamed for Friday's deadly attack?"

This year state lawmakers moved to counteract the troubling and deceptive practices employed by some "crisis pregnancy" centers to deter women from considering an abortion. Their response — the Reproductive FACT Act, which Gov. Jerry Brown...

Amelia Bonow is in hiding.
She left her apartment here after her address was published online and the death threats began. Her crime? She had an abortion. And after the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Sept. 18 to defund Planned Parenthood, she...

"Anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'...

It's been nearly a year since Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old terminally ill California woman, made headlines with her public decision to take her own life to avoid a painful end from brain cancer. Maynard, who died in November, moved to Oregon because...

A GOP-sponsored bill — the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act — which would ban abortion beyond 20 weeks except in cases of rape or when the life of the mother is at risk, has already passed in the House of Representatives. The Senate is expected to...

In a further sign of his emphasis on mercy, Pope Francis declared Tuesday that all priests, during a special holy year starting in December, will have the authority to pardon women who have had abortions, a power usually reserved for bishops.
The move...